


Out

by Trismegistus (Lebateleur)



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Escape, Mind Games, Strategy & Tactics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-01
Updated: 2005-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22233346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lebateleur/pseuds/Trismegistus
Summary: It’s now or never, he thinks, and stills, staring at his hands as they lie open atop his knees.Spoilers for Pages 58 and 59.
Kudos: 9





	Out

It’s now or never, he thinks, and stills, staring at his hands as they lie open atop his knees. He’s hesitating, and it’s so rare for him to hesitate over any decision once he’s made it that he’s amused to find himself doing it. This is the single largest risk he has ever taken, and he, more than most people, detests acting without first being certain of the results.

He’s been piling risks one on top of the other ever since he involved himself in the Kira investigation. Exposing himself in the flesh as L was a risk. Revealing the vast extent of his intelligence and resources another. Directly engaging Light Yagami in an intellectual battle yet another on top of that. But now things have gone too far.

L is a investigator, not an officer of the law; he is not bound to see this case through to its conclusion; and life has not been kind enough to him for him to believe he has any moral responsibility to see Kira punished for his crimes. No, his interest lay only in discovering how Kira had done it. He has accomplished that goal, and it is only the pressure of others who believe that Kira must be brought to justice which has kept him with the case this long. L is finished, as far as he is concerned.

Throughout the course of the investigation L had communicated his findings carefully, surreptitiously, through coded and scattered messages to Wammy. _Shinigami real. Inscription of names in notebook cause of death. Light Yagami, Misa Amane, Rei Higuchi and others probable murderers. Case closed._ And then he’d waited for permission to withdraw.

Only it hadn’t come. That was his fault too; he’s tied up too much of Wammy’s money and resources hunting Kira to be let off that easily, and he does owe something to the man who raised him, educated him, and provided him with the means to exist without a name, identity, or job. And that man wants Kira punished and the murder note safe in his own hands. Unfortunately, L does not see it in those terms.

More messages had followed. L had accomplished what he’d set out to accomplish. He is a detective, a solver of unsolvable riddles. It is not his job to bring anyone to justice. He’d waited for the response. 

When it came, it was terse and remonstrative. L was to do what he was told, or risk losing his finances, his mobility, and his anonymity. And, Wammy had written, if what L had said about the murder note was true, he would very much want to hold on to that anonymity for more immediate reasons than maintaining his current sheltered lifestyle.

L feels some amount of obligation to this man, but not nearly enough to have created a sense of unwavering duty, oh no. He is no closer to proving to anyone but himself that Light Yagami is Kira, and he can feel the noose about his neck beginning to tighten with each day that passes as the investigation stalls. So, as he desperately carries on - questioning the shinigami, observing Light, reviewing video after video for any clues he might have missed - he also secretly begins to do something that it had never occurred to him to do before – investigate his own benefactor.

Who owns, as it turns out, not just two sister orphanages in Japan and Leeds, but ten, twelve, eighteen orphanages the world over. L spends every available moment tracing and then hacking all of their records, and what he finds is extremely disturbing. 

Abigail Quincy was the first, almost forty years ago. Then had come Bran Kurst, Chloe Johannson, Derrick Haider: all dead in the Cold War. A few years later, Gentarou Kuninaga, the first non-European. Haruka Ishii and Keita Moritomo L had known personally; several years older than L, they'd been raised in the same orphanage. L had been told at the time of their deaths that they’d died together in an auto accident; the information on the screen in front of him says differently. And after L himself come Nia Helms and Mero Kowalski, the two current prize pupils, ready to take his place should he ever fail. 

He hasn’t yet uncovered the letters E, F, I, and J: who they were or what happened to them, but he’s already assembled more than enough evidence to know what is likely to be his fate, if not now, then during a different investigation, and more importantly, to understand exactly how disposable he truly is. 

Try as L might, he can only find the one solution. He had hoped beyond hope that he would get out before he died. Now he realises that he is going to die, no matter what he does. It is terrifying, this knowledge, but also calming once he has come to terms with its inevitability.

No one knows better than he the full degree of the resources Wammy commands. Even though L is smarter than any of them, they would still find him, no matter how clever he was, how far he ran. He would be brought back. L can either die on the run from both Kira and the people who have made L what he is, or he can die now.

Still, at least he can choose his own time this way. And yet, he hesitates. He’s been hesitating the whole of this long week, while he does his best to mentally prepare himself, but ultimately nothing can prepare him for what he knows he must do. So he bides his time, trying to give nothing away, and waits for an opportunity to present itself.

Luck is kinder to him than he had dared hope it would be. “If, heaven forbid, I am ever discovered,” Wammy had once told L with his grave, deliberate English accent, “I have made arrangements so that all my records will be erased. Then the other Wataris will carry on where I no longer can.” And although L can hardly believe it, there are the words on the screen before his eyes: “All Data Deletion.”

L knows he will never have a better opportunity than this, so before he can grow too frightened to do it, he pinches the area near one ankle between thumb and finger, popping the capsule embedded just beneath the surface of the skin. 

The poison takes hold almost immediately; he can feel his heart slowing, the blood growing sluggish in his veins as his nervous system shuts down almost completely.

He’s unable to remain upright any longer and tumbles to the floor to Aizawa’s shocked cries and Light’s triumphant face, and he knows he has them fooled, at least initially. Whether the ruse will hold up longer is anyone’s guess, but he doubts most Japanese detectives are aware of the existence, let alone able to identify the symptoms of, this class of nervous system poison.

It is very much a gamble; he cannot anticipate what will happen to him once he revives in whatever morgue they bring him to: whether he will suffer any serious brain damage, or even if he will wake up at all before they cremate him. But whatever does happen, he is confident that he will be able to handle it. And with Kira, the police, and the people who once held his strings convinced he's dead, he will be at long last, out.


End file.
